Flock for Thee but Not for Me

When I first heard about the DC police union objecting to the use of Flock cameras, I thought that perhaps someone in the organization was showing some integrity.

Silly me, Police Benevolent Associations and their ilk have no integrity at all. 

What they were objecting to was the use of Flock cameras to enforce police accountability.

The national blowback against Flock license-plate readers is also hitting the Washington region, with D.C.’s police union and leaders in a Northern Virginia city raising concerns about the use of the technology in recent days.

Gregg Pemberton, president of the D.C. police union, said Friday the city’s department has used license plate readers for many years and is a powerful investigative tool. But he noted Flock’s technology can also create detailed files on people not suspected of any crimes.

………

Pemberton’s skepticism of the technology also comes as the union said it learned the police force’s internal affairs department had used the technology to investigate sworn officers.

The union filed misconduct complaints and a grievance about what it said was improper use of the technology, but Pemberton said department leadership has so far declined to investigate. The department has since restricted access to the system, according to the union.

To the degree that the Flock panopticon can be said to have a highest use, the investigation of potential police misconduct is that highest use.

The fact that the cops are gored by their own ox is a good thing.

This Makes Me Smile

It looks like Flock Security is now offering employee buyouts in an attempt to reduce headcount.

They have become too toxic, and contracts are being canceled, not being renewed, or sales inquiries are being rebuffed.

Good. 

Flock Safety announced a voluntary employee separation program on Friday, offering a “generous” severance package to those who want to leave amid growing backlash against the surveillance technology company, according to an internal email shared with WIRED.

Applications for Flock’s voluntary severance program opened Friday, and employees have until October 2 to decide whether to leave the company. Flock expects to grant buyouts to the majority of workers who apply, according to the email. People familiar with the program but not authorized to discuss it publicly say they believe that a significant number of the startup’s roughly 1,500 employees may try to depart.

Flock is making the severance offers as it continues to lose customers amid growing frustration across the US about its sprawling network of license plate readers, which have raised concerns about privacy and misuse. In the last month, WIRED has documented officers allegedly abusing Flock to track former romantic partners and colleagues, exposed how widely some agencies share access to the system, shown how little is known about the manufacturing of the devices, and revealed in new detail how much information Flock’s cameras collect based on data from a dismantled Flock device.

 

Headline of the Day

FBI Warns ICE Agents Not to Trust Any Woman Willing to Date Them

—Gizmodo on the warning to ICE agents that no woman in their right mind would want to date them without an ulterior motive.

So, ICE are basically a large violent incel pod.

Support Your Local Police

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has elected not to punish officers who assaulted a bicyclist who was blocking their parking on a sidewalk.

Assault is against NYPD policy, and so is parking on the sidewalk, but Ms. Tisch does not care.

Zohran Mamdani, fire her now.  It is clear that the Commissioner is about as interested in pursuing police misconduct as Donald Trump is in pursuing the Epstein files.

Police officers can rough up civilians to protect their ability to illegally park.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion from a recent decision by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to not punish officers who roughed up and threatened to run over a cyclist who was blocking other cops from parking on a sidewalk — a decision by the top cop that came even though the NYPD’s patrol guide prohibits both excessive force and bars officers from parking on the sidewalk.

The main details of the initial October 2023 incident are not in dispute: According to the just-obtained Civilian Complaint Review Board case file obtained by Streetsblog, the cyclist stood on the sidewalk on Bergen Street near the 78th Precinct house in Park Slope as Sgt. William McKnight tried to park his personal vehicle on the sidewalk.

The cyclist refused to move, and two officers then pushed the cyclist and used the bike rider’s backpack to pull them out of the way. McKnight, meanwhile, told the cyclist that he should have run them over and “ruined” their day. (The cyclist’s name was redacted in the CCRB file, so their gender is unknown to us).

But in the letter that cleared the officers of wrongdoing, Deputy Chief Michael Baker (who handled the correspondence for Tisch) argued that the officers have a right to use force to help their colleagues, even though the NYPD’s policies (and city and state law) do not allow officers to park on public sidewalks.

“To issue discipline would not be in the interest of justice,” Baker wrote, setting aside the CCRB recommendation that the officers receive discipline for their use and threat of force against the cyclist.

 

Of Course They Did

It turns out that DHS officers were told by department counsel to break the law in their search for non-existent non-citizen voting fraud.

I can haz disbarrment? 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lawyers told officers investigating voter fraud they would not be held responsible for violating state laws around accessing voter registration information, an anonymous whistleblower revealed on Monday. DHS officers also had concerns about the reliability of the data they were working with, the whistleblower said.

The Trump administration has ramped up its investigation into noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Noncitizen voting is extremely rare and the effort has only turned up a handful of cases so far.

As part of the effort, officers tasked with investigating potential non-citizen voters were told to take data DHS had compiled on voters and run it through state websites where voters can look up their voter information. Some states require voters to click attestations affirming that they are looking up their own voter information. On the Virginia Department of Elections website, for example, voters must click a disclaimer that says: “I certify and affirm that the information provided to access my voter registration is my own or I am expressly authorized by the voter to access this information. I understand that it is unlawful to access the record of any other voter, punishable as computer fraud.”

“In light of these instructions about access to the state websites, officers expressed concerns that accessing registered voter information on these websites may be illegal as officers are essentially misrepresenting themselves as the potential registered voter (with or without a specific attestation),” lawyers for Democracy Defenders Fund, who is representing the whistleblower, wrote in the disclosure.

I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit* but it does seem to me specifically instructing your client to break the law should be cause for these lawyers to lose their license to practice.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Good

Following arresting a local woman for complaining about local water quality, and then arresting a protester by falsifying testimony, Texas has shut down the Trinidad, TX police department.

The State of Texas has ordered the Trinidad Police Department to shut down after an investigation found the small municipal law-enforcement agency failed to meet minimum state standards and could not demonstrate that it was providing sufficient public benefit to the community.

The extraordinary action by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, commonly known as TCOLE, means another small American municipality will rely more heavily on a larger county law-enforcement agency to provide an essential government service.

According to FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth, TCOLE notified Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws that the department had “failed to meet minimum standards” and could not provide evidence that the police agency provided a public benefit to the community.

The Trinidad Police Department is expected to lose its TCOLE agency licensing by Friday, effectively ending its ability to operate as the city’s municipal police agency.

………

Much of the recent scrutiny surrounding Trinidad began with resident and citizen journalist Jennifer Combs.

Combs used her Southern Belle Watch Facebook platform to raise concerns about Trinidad’s municipal water.

She alleged residents had experienced health problems linked to the water and posted photographs of discolored water.

The Trinidad Police Department disputed claims being circulated about the water system.

Police subsequently arrested Combs on a felony false-alarm charge.

The arrest attracted significant attention because it involved a citizen publishing information and criticism concerning a public utility operated by the same municipal government whose police department arrested her.

A Henderson County grand jury subsequently declined to indict Combs.

The controversy did not end there.

Winston Wesley Noles, known online as Otto the Watchdog, was arrested for disorderly conduct while protesting Combs’ arrest.

That charge was subsequently dismissed.

Support your local police.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I get that recruiting at the FBI is not what it once was, but recruiting people who frequent prostitutes and f%$# animals seems to be desparation.

Worst timeline ever, 

Kash Patel's FBI is being pilloried online after a new report revealed the bureau quietly loosened the vetting standards that once automatically disqualified applicants who had hired sex workers, stolen from an employer or engaged in bestiality.

According to CBS News, the FBI in June eased some background check rules so that those acts, most of them illegal, are no longer instant disqualifiers for would-be agents. A candidate may now get a pass on prostitution as long as they did not hire sex workers three or more times and not within the past decade, and someone who committed bestiality as a minor could still make the cut, sources told the outlet.

The change comes as the FBI lost more than 1,000 special agents in 2025, part of an exodus of firings, forced retirements and polygraphs since Trump returned to power. Critics say the loosened rules point to a recruiting crisis.

"How can this not be reflective of a recruiting problem at the FBI if you are lowering your standards on issues like bestiality and prostitution?" attorney Mark Zaid told CBS.

Only the very best people?

No Disciplinary Actions

After prosecutors in Queens, New York were discovered to have concealed exculpatory evidence, The disciplinary committee decided to take no action against them.

These guys should have been fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… Into the sun.

Five years ago, one of the state’s top judges found Queens prosecutors had deliberately hidden evidence that could have spared three men decades in prison. Not long afterward, an attorney asked a disciplinary committee to investigate the incident.

The committee has finally returned its own finding. There is “insufficient evidence” the prosecutors had violated any of the “rules and laws governing attorney conduct,” according to a letter from the committee that was obtained by Gothamist.

The letter states the committee has closed the complaints against seven prosecutors filed in connection with the wrongful murder conviction of George Bell.

The five-sentence letter offers no information about the committee’s investigation or reasoning. Gothamist’s reporting on the matter is the first public confirmation of how the disciplinary process ended, and may be the only accounting the public ever gets.

This is why secret proceedings done by secret committees staffed by fellow members of the same profession rarely if ever deliver meaningful accountability.

Headline of the Day

Penis Costume Protester Prevails in Court

—Courthouse News Service

Yeah, I know this is from April, I was doing some bloggy house cleaning, and came across it again.

One could call it a, ahem, hard case. But ultimately, an Alabama judge found, not hard enough.

Fairhope Municipal Judge Haymes Snedeker acquitted Renea Gamble Wednesday of all remaining misdemeanor charges stemming from her decision to wear a inflatable 7-foot penis costume at an anti-Trump “No Kings” protest in October 2025.

Gamble walked out of the courtroom after three hours of testimony cleared of any wrongdoing, but her attorney said her arrest was traumatizing and she may consider legal recourse.

Seriously, in a nation of truck nuts, how is this an arrestable offense? 

"The Very Best People"

Rather unsurprisingly, it has been discovered that ICE Agent David Brouillette, who murdered Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine has a long history of domestic violence and mental illness.

This guy should never been allowed anywhere near any sort of law enforcement of security position. 

He shouldn't be a security guard, nor a meter maid, nor a bouncer at a bar.

The fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine has renewed concerns about the Trump administration’s push to quickly hire officers for mass deportations, after a woman said her abusive ex-husband told her he was the officer who fired his gun.

Ashley Brouillette said her former spouse, David Brouillette, told her in a phone call that he is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday.

She identified him in video footage from the scene of the incident, which does not show the shooting itself, but does show two officers in the moments after.

David Brouillette also called his other ex-wife and told her the same thing, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their privacy.

………

DHS conducted a massive drive to recruit 10,000 enforcement officers last year. In recent weeks, the agency has ramped up street arrests of alleged undocumented immigrants, aiming for as many as 2,000 a day. Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband told her in November that he’d accepted a job with ICE.

Newly hired officers received a shortened training course. Those with prior law enforcement experience were often given an even more accelerated timeline.

………

A review of court files, employment records and interviews with people who have known Brouillette for many years indicate he had worked off and on in law enforcement. He has also had volatile personal relationships, with him and his two ex-wives accusing each other of abuse and neglect.

“If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes,” Lucinda Brouillette, David’s second ex-wife, said in a statement Saturday. “That belief is not based on speculation, but on my own lived experiences over many years.”

Ashley Brouillette said that on the same day her ex-husband told her he’d joined ICE, he left her a voicemail calling her a “disgusting, fat” expletive and saying that her throat should be slit. She shared the voicemail with The Washington Post.

……… 

Ashley Brouillette said her ex-husband was diagnosed with several mental health disorders as a young adult, and that his temperament and mental health issues worsened after joining the Army. The Post could not independently verify those claims. When he left the military, records show, he went on to work short stints in various law enforcement jobs, including as an officer at the Maine Department of Corrections from November 2015 to August 2016. 

So not surprised.  This sort of enshittification is a feature of the, "Very best people," that Trump hires.

Now Indict Them

Federal law enforcement is finally sharing data from the Good and Pretti murders with Minnesota law enforcement.

Good.  No go forth and indict the bastards. 

Months of effort between Minnesota’s state and federal law enforcement agencies led the Justice Department to turn over a substantial amount of evidence from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during Operation Metro Surge, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Monday.

The evidence, which was exchanged with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) over the last two weeks without public acknowledgment by the federal government or Minnesota law enforcement officials, includes the SUV that Good was driving when she was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross. It also includes hard drives of federal evidence like body camera footage and statements from immigration enforcement agents about the killings.

At a news conference, Moriarty said the new information will allow state investigators to be more thorough in determining whether or not to charge federal agents with crimes in connection with the killings.

 

Cover Them Up With Trash Bags

After years of misuse by the police, a 30%+ error rate, and rising public protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has elected not to renew their contract with Flock cameras.

Good.  Now address the remaining problem, that Flock will not remove the cameras and will continue to spy on innocent citizens while they lobby for a new contract. 

The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday stopped working with a surveillance technology company over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.

Flock Safety operates 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles, allowing authorities to track vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives. It is one of a handful of vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal officials. Advocacy groups worry that information could help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

………

Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.

“The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” said Gialamas.

He said the LAPD would stop using Flock “until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

The LAPD signed a three-year agreement with Flock in July 2023 that was already set to expire Saturday.

………

Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led smaller cities across the country to end their relationships with the company.


In Northern California, the city of Mountain View turned off its 30 Flock cameras in February after officials announced that federal and state law enforcement agencies had accessed city data in violation of the city’s policies.

………

Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended in the audit that the department suspend the deployment of any new automatic license plate readers, known as ALPRs, and the execution of new contracts.

Any new contracts should go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds, according to the report.


“Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.

Even if one supports the indiscriminate use of ALPRs in US cities (I do not) Flock is a toxic bad actor whose business model is secrecy and back loaded bribery to public officials.

Another Day, More Fascism

Federal prosecutors have charged anti-ICE 15 protesters with conspiracy and related charges for protests in and around Minneapolis.

I wonder what sort of f%$#ed up sh%$ the prosecutors pulled in the grand jury to get indictments.

It probably makes what happened in Chicago look like a cake walk.

Federal prosecutors have charged 15 Minnesotans who are accused of efforts to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement” during Operation Metro Surge protests.

Outside the Warren E. Burger Federal Building, where some of the defendants’ first appearances took place, protesters clashed with U.S. Marshals, who deployed gas, pepper spray and flash bangs at the scene.

A dozen of those charged were arrested. Numerous defendants were released later in the day.

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, alongside Homeland Security Investigations officials, said the charges stem from “conspiring to impede or injure federal officers and other offenses against members of two Minneapolis-based antifa groups.” Antifa, short for antifascist, has been a target of the Trump administration, with the president last year labeling it a domestic terrorist organization.

 

Today in Fascism

Ice attempted to raid the offices of lawyers representing migrant children.

Of course they did this without any warrants.

Cops don't get to seize lawyers records, but they don't care, because they are little more than a heavily armed gang. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents attempted to raid the offices of attorneys for unaccompanied migrant children this week, lawyers tell The Lever, the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s attempt to collect sensitive data on children in the U.S. immigration system.

As The Lever first reported last week, the legal services providers for unaccompanied migrant children — who represent the youth in deportation proceedings — have been locked in a standoff with the Trump administration over requests for sensitive case data on their clients.

Now, ICE agents are arriving at their doors.

Dozens of nonprofits and law firms around the country provide critical legal representation to migrant children under the Unaccompanied Children Program, which is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. The program has become a central focus in the Trump administration’s ongoing targeting of immigrants.

………

Providing sensitive client data to the federal government could represent a serious violation of attorney-client privilege and put vulnerable children at risk, attorneys say. Already, the immigration courts are expediting children’s cases in an apparent attempt to deport children as fast as possible.

On Thursday, two agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative arm of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at the Washington, D.C., offices of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which represents unaccompanied minors.

According to the organization’s executive director, Michael Lukens, security guards turned the agents away when they did not present a valid warrant.

 Calling these people, "Good Germans," gives them too much credit.

Gee, Fascism Much?

Kash Patel's FBI just raided an Ohio group dedicated to helping minorities vote on bogus allegations of voting fraud. 

This is a clear attempt to intimidate minority voters.

FBI agents on Thursday fanned out across the state carrying out a raid and questioning employees of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a voting rights organization, a board member said.

Prentiss Haney said agents raided the organization’s Cleveland office, and more than 100 agents showed up at current and former employees’ homes. He said agents seized electronic devices including phones and computers. Agents had a search warrant for the raid on the Cleveland office, he said.

Haney said agents asked questions revolving around voter fraud, a false claim repeatedly pushed by President Donald Trump and administration officials that U.S. elections are rigged.

“It’s actually about voter intimidation and political intimidation,” Haney said. “They came in like mob bosses to scare people from engaging in democratic participation.”

If (hopefully when) the worm turns, a lot of people need to see the inside of a court for stuff like this.

Well, Trash Belongs in Trash Bags

As the backlash against Flock AI driven license plate readers grow, more and more municipalities are canceling their contracts.

They find two problems, canceling the contract is difficult because of their Byzantine nature, and even when canceled, Flock does not remove them, so the cameras remain on their poles, where anyone with a Flock contract (think ICE) can continue to use them.

Some towns have an interesting way of dealing with this, they are sending out government workers to cover the cameras with trash bags. (alternate link)

The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used. 

Joe Parlette, the deputy city manager of Dayton, said at a city commission meeting last week that the “Dayton Police Department agreed to work with Public Works to put bags over the cameras” as a stop-gap measure until Flock cameras could be removed entirely. I spoke to multiple people in Dayton who said they had seen bagged cameras in the last few days. The Dayton Daily News first reported on the baggings.

Dayton is not the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash bags because they can’t figure out how to immediately terminate the use of the cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois also covered its cameras with trash bags while it was waiting for the company to remove them from the city. Cities around the country have been reconsidering their relationship with the surveillance company after reporting from 404 Media and local news outlets that showed data from the cameras was making its way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through Flock’s national camera network.

Flock cameras are usually solar powered, so once installed, it costs more to take them down than it does to leave them there, particularly if the data can be sold to someone else.

Garbage bags are a decent solution to this dynamic. 

Demanding the Right to Murder Black Men

At the state convention Minnesota Republicans held a moment of silence for Derek Chauvan, who murdered George Floyd.

They are offended that white cops are not allowed to murder black men whenever they want.

The Minnesota Republican party’s decision to hold a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, has angered the state’s attorney general – who was the lead prosecutor in the case.

Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said Saturday’s gesture at the state Republicans’ annual convention in Duluth was “an act of profound cruelty” to Floyd’s family and “disrespectful” to Minnesota’s law enforcement personnel.

“This decision dishonors the memory of George Floyd and wounds his loved ones all over again,” Ellison said in a statement.

Alluding to how the murder had happened six years earlier almost exactly, Ellison added: “To honor the man convicted of murdering George Floyd – days after the very anniversary of that terrible day – is an act of profound cruelty to the Floyd family and to every Minnesotan who believes in accountability under law.

These are really truly awful people.

Support Your Local Police

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the  press. 

How is This Not Dancing on Sailors' Graves?

When Kash Patel went to Hawaii last year, he insisted that it was not a vacation, but rather a working trip where he snorkeled around the wreck of the USS Arizona.

As an FYI, this is generally forbidden, with exceptions being made for surveys of the state of the wreck and for interring survivors of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, who have requested to be laid to rest there.

I did not think that the Trump Administration could get any more creepy and inhuman.

It appears that I was misinformed.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been caught in yet another eyebrow-raising side quest: a snorkeling excursion to a sunken battleship in Hawaii entombing hundreds of sailors and Marines.

The controversial official’s strange trip was almost a year ago, but leaked now amid mounting scrutiny of his activities in office.

When Patel flew to Hawaii last July, FBI news releases framed the visit as part of his “ongoing commitment to supporting frontline efforts and strengthening interagency partnerships,” noting meetings with local law enforcement and a walking tour of the Honolulu field office. He then went on to Australia and New Zealand.

But the FBI director returned to the island just days later for what government officials described in internal emails as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona, the Associated Press reports. The battleship was sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and serves as a memorial and a war grave for more than 900 crew members.

Headline of the Day

To Protect And Swerve: NYPD Cop Has 547 Speeding Tickets Yet Remains On The Force 

—Streetsblog New York City, on the serial (to the point of being surreal) traffic offender NYC police officer

The fact that this guy has been caught multiple times speeding on residential streets, school zones, etc. yet remains a police officer indicates a problem.

I'm a bit of a cynic, but my guess is that he's used his law enforcement connections to get out of paying fines. 

Conservatively, the total fines for those speeding tickets is something north of 30 Grand. 

Is this public enemy #1?

James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island. Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights 547 times in that one borough. He received 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day.

That record makes Giovansanti the second-most-reckless driver in the city. Because he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across the island, he poses a unique danger to himself and his neighbors. Ticket data show a pattern of dangerous driving in a wide arc from Pleasant Plains to Tompkinsville.

And here’s what makes him a true enemy of the public: Giovansanti is an officer in the New York City Police Department — the agency supposedly in charge of keeping New Yorkers out of harm’s way.

………

Activists say that Giovansanti is a poster child for the urgency of passing the “Stop Super Speeders Act,” a pending bill in Albany that would force the worst repeat speeders to install a speed limiter in their vehicles. If such a law was already in place, Giovansanti’s truck would have been rendered unable to speed on Aug. 7, 2022, just months after he bought it. 

………

Records show that James Giovansanti, 33, reserves the bulk of his speeding for the borough’s densely populated North Shore. A traffic camera on Richmond Avenue and Monsey Place — the same block as P.S. 22, an elementary school that enrolls more than 700 students — issued 25 speeding tickets to the truck.

Another camera on Richmond Terrace and John Street ticketed the truck 50 times. A third camera on Richmond Terrace and Nicholas Avenue ticketed the truck 55 times. Those last two cameras are located just north of Port Richmond High School, which enrolls more than 1,500 teens. 

………

Giovansanti’s choice of car dramatically heightens these risks. An unmodified 2022 RAM 1500 weighs at least 4,775 pounds, measures at least 77 inches tall, and features an enormous, boxy and flat-faced hood. This design limits the driver’s ability to see pedestrians and cyclists and makes it far more likely they will drag a crash victim beneath their car’s chassis instead of throwing them onto its hood.

We could not determine whether Giovansanti has ever harmed someone by speeding. But the circumstantial evidence is not reassuring: The right side of his truck is visibly damaged, and he refused to answer a straightforward question about his collision history.  

Support your local police.